Tech Conference Recap – ChannelCon17
Our team is back from exhibiting at ChannelCon 2017 and we’ve got some highlights to share with you! ChannelCon was held July 31 to August 2 at the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas and put on by CompTIA, one of the IT industry's top trade associations. The channel tech conference was attended by 1200 of the industry’s leading solution providers, vendors, distributors, IT professionals and media, with over 150 exhibitors. Here’s our recap: Notes from the Conference Floor We really enjoyed the executive interview with Alyssa Fitzpatrick (GM of worldwide channel sales at Microsoft), Todd Thibodeaux (CEO of CompTIA), and Joe Panettieri (Editor at ChannelE2E). Among other hot topics, Microsoft’s “partner first” strategy was discussed. Fitzpatrick said that Microsoft is now, “putting the partners’ success first in front of what we are doing from a measurement, metrics and management perspective.” In working towards this, Microsoft has taken steps to simplify how partners interact with Microsoft and enhance the partner experience. This really resonated with our Channel team as they work to grow ImagIT’s partner community. ChannelCon’s 1200 attendees came from various tech backgrounds, with 85-90% of attendees comprised of mid-sized to large MSPs. The attendees at ChannelCon 2017 were a captive audience and very knowledge driven. Although the booth exhibition hours were shorter than we would have liked (only two hours per day), this created a sense of urgency and those hours were well attended. Networking Opportunities ImagIT attended two conference-sponsored networking events and co-hosted a private event. On Monday night ImagIT co-sponsored a [...]